10 Popular Actors of ‘Orange Is The New Black’ and Their Journey To Fame

Orange Is The New Black has undoubtedly introduced us to many new actors like Poussey, Taystee and Crazy Eyes. But along with the new talent, there are many actors whose real potential has shone through by the medium of this television series. It is one of the unique series, not just conceptually, but also in the treatment that it gives to all its actors. There must be hardly any actor on the show who would feel that the role that they are playing is not thought through, and there is no scope to display one’s talent in that role. Synonymous with their new OITNB names now, there are actually some actors on the show that have been around for a long time. Take a look at their journey till OITNB, and you may even recall watching some of these actors:

10) Taylor Schilling – Dark Matter And Mercy

Taylor Schilling had been around in Hollywood for six years before she became Piper Chapman. A 2006 graduate from Fordham, she got her first break alongside Meryl Streep in just her first year of struggle, in a movie titled Dark Matter. It was a directorial venture of Chen-Shi-Zheng, And Schiller played the role of Jackie in the movie. Although this was a very small role, but was a beginning nevertheless. Later, she landed up her first big break with a role in NBC’s medical drama, Mercy. Here, she played the role of Veronica Callahan, a nurse who has returned from the extreme conditions of Iraq. Unfortunately, the show did not strike a chord with the audiences and was cancelled after its first season. She was also seen in small roles in Atlas Shrugged and Argo, and 2013 was the year that brought Orange Is The New Black role to her, and rest, as they say, is history.
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9) Kate Mulgrew – Ryan’s Hope

She plays Red on the show, and you may also remember her as Kathyrn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. In reality, she had been popular since a long time, even before both of these creations became a hit. Mulgrew was seen on an ABC soap opera named Ryan’s Hope that aired in 1975. At that time, she was just 20 years old, and she played the role of Mary in the show. The show focused on an Irish family, the Ryans, and Mary was the daughter of the family and an aspiring journalist. Her character and she, herself became famous. However, she quit the show after two years. Due to her popularity, they did not kill the character and recast her in another role, and instead of her, got another actor to play Mary on the show. Such was her popularity that even after changing three Marys the audiences only wanted to see Mulgrew in the role. In the end, the network had no choice but to kill Mary on the show. They did it by getting her brutally murdered on the show. Such a tragic end, literally!